This article takes as its point of departure the Swedish government’s directive for the committee of inquiry to propose a museum of the Holocaust and its instruction that “stories from survivors with a connection to Sweden should be of central importance” in the future museum. In Sweden, there are a great number of archival collections containing survivor stories. However, most of these collections were not gathered with the intention to preserve culturally significant stories for the future. Rather, the survivor stories collected were intended as evidence in Nazi trials or for future scientific or historical studies.

The article explores the history of the practice of collecting and archiving survivor stories in Sweden. The empirical example consists of six of the largest collections with “survivor stories”, initiated during the years 1945 to 2020. The focus is on describing and comparing the different motives for how and why the various collections were initiated and the initiators ideas on what the collected material would be used for. Who were the initiators? What documentation methods were used during the different collection processes? What do the different documentation processes tell us about the perception of what a survivor story is and how it should be collected and used at different times? How has the perception of the “survivor story” changed or not changed over time? The end of the article tentative considers what we can learn from these previous collection initiatives in Sweden and how this might be taken forward by the new Holocaust museum.

I boken undersöks tre olika samlingar med migrationstema i relation till samhällspolitiska debatter om migration och kultur under 1970-talet till 2010-talet. Vem tog initiativet till de olika dokumenationsprojketetn? Vilket inflytande hade de invandrade över hur och vilka berättelser som samlades in? Med utgångspunkt i dessa frågor visar författarna hur migration som kulturarv ständigt har omförhandlats, inte bara av kulturarvsinstitutioner och andra aktörer utan också av de personer som har bidargit med sina berättelser.

In a Swedish context, Jewish women’s experiences and actions have gone unrecorded and unrecognised; most narratives of Swedish Jewish history offer only a partial account of their past. Marginalised or ignored, or absorbed into universalised categories of ‘Jews’, ‘women’ or ‘survivors’, the experiences and histories of Jewish women are in general not represented in previous Swedish research on the history of the Jewish minority, the Swedish Jewish response to the Nazi terror and the Holocaust or the history of the women’s movement in general. Previous research on the Swedish Jewish response and assistance for the Jewish refugees and survivors of Nazi persecution has mainly dealt with the Jewish community in Stockholm and its relief committee, where the women were absent from leadership positions. The purpose of this study is to explore if and how the Jewish women’s club in Stockholm initiated or was involved in relief activities for and with the persecuted Jews of Europe. Specifically, this is investigated in the context of how the club was established and manifested in public by examining what questions the club raised and what activities it organised in the 1930s and 1940s.

MÄNNISKOR SOM FÖRDRIVS eller flyr är ett konstant temagenom historien. Vem som är flykting, vem som har ansvaret för flyktingarna och hur mottagandet av dem har organiserats och vilka rättigheter de flyende ska ha, har dock varieratgenom olika tider. Det var först 1951som världen fick en universell definition av begreppet »flykting« i och med FN:s flyktingkonvention. Enligt den är en flykting en person som »flyttsitt land i välgrundad fruktan för förföljelse på grund av ras, religion, tillhörighet till en viss samhällsgrupp eller politisksamhörighet, och som befinner sig utanför det land vari han är medborgare och som på tidigare nämnd fruktan inte kan eller ill återvända till det landet« (UNHCR 2018a). Flyktingkonventionen är den första internationella överenskommelse som förutom att definiera vem som ska räknas som flykting även fastslår flyktingars rätt till skydd och sociala rättigheter som ska garanteras dem av den mottagande staten. Det moderna flyktingbegreppet utgår från att individer tillhör eller fördrivs från olika nationalstater och att de kan söka skydd, asyl, i andra stater. De stater som har ratificerat konventionen förbinder sig att agera utifrån konventionens fastlagda principer (UNHCR 2018b). Men även om stater sedan 1951har förbundit sig att ta emot och ta om hand om flyktingar som sökerasyl, spelar det sociala arbetet från frivilligorganisationer och individer som på egen hand söker hjälpa en viktig roll. Speciellt i tider som exempelvis hösten 2015, när många flyktingar kommer samtidigt och staten har svårt att hantera och organisera samordnade mottagningsinsatser för alla de människor som söker skydd (SOU 2017:12).

A life story can be simplistically defined as a story that a person tells about his or her life or chosen parts of that life. Regardless of when a life story is told, the story is also a cultural and social product. We understand and tell our lives in a way that is understandable not only to others, but also to ourselves. Memories and stories are framed and shaped in relation to the concepts, beliefs and stories that exist in our contemporary culture and society. The analysis needs to consider not only the narrative offered, but also the meanings invested in it and their discursive origins. However, when working with previously collected and archived narrative material, it is not only the narrator’s relationship to, and negotiation of, existing discourses that should be considered, but also how the memory institution that initiates, creates and preserves collections of narratives contributes to the shaping of a certain type of life story and understanding of experiences in the past. Thus, the interviewee and the interviewer, but also the archivists and the institution, are emphasised as co-creators of the stories collected and archived in the collection. An important part of the analysis is therefore to listen for what is taken for granted, what is included in the stories, and also for the silences. This article examines how Jewish lives could be narrated during the years 1994–98 in the context of the collecting of Jewish memories at the Nordic Museum in Stockholm. It investigates in what ways the different actors involved in the collecting process – interviewers, interviewees, narrators and the memory institution itself – understood contemporary discourses on Jewishness and the identity categories used, such as religion, gender, class, generation and nation, when Swedishness and Jewishness were constructed in the individual life stories and in the design and archivisation of the collection.